Riesling Road Trip Part 1: LA, Palm Springs & Las Vegas ---
On June 19th 2013 the Riesling Road Trip hit the road for New York with a kick-off celebration in Los Angeles and stops in Palm Springs and Las Vegas. Stay tuned to see where we'll end up next!

Green harvesting is used to reduce the yields and to improve the quality of a wine. Removing the tiny, immature grapes while they are still green induces the vine to put all its energy into developing the remaining grapes.

Red wine production is more complex than white wine production.
The red pigments lie in the berry skins. There are two ways to release these color pigments and to produce red wine: must heating and fermentation on the skins.

To prevent pests and fungal diseases winemakers are active in the vineyard to ensure optimal growing conditions. Soil management and plant protection measures are necessary in order harvest healthy grapes in autumn.

Within the process of pressing there are various parameters that can influence the quality and the style of the wine: type of pressing, pressure control, the decision whether to stem the grapes or do whole cluster pressing.

Wine doesn't leap immediately to mind when you think about quality German brands. But that's changing, as Emma McNamara discoverd in the Pfalz region. There she met Ernst Büscher of the German Wine Institute; Andreas Hütwohl at Von Winning winery and Christopher Gifford at The Corkscrew in Dublin.

"Perfect Pairings is a journey that all of us are taking together." - Jeannie Cho Lee MW.
An event organized by the German Wine Institute in cooperaton with the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, Berlin with Jeannie Cho Lee MW and Ronald Shao, chef of the Hong Kong Jockey Club.
Produced by: Bureau für Begeisterung

German Pinot Noir came up trumps at a recent International Pinot Noir tasting, with seven of the judges top 10 wines coming from Germany. The blind tasting, which was judged by a world-class panel of wine experts including Jancis Robinson MW, Xavier Rousset MS and Peter McCombie MW, was organised by the German Wine Institute and chaired by Tim Atkin MW.

The “Romantic Road” and the “Skywalk” run along the Saale-Unstrut Wine Route. Castles and palaces such as the Neuenburg and the Rudelsburg, important
buildings like Naumburg Cathedral and mystical sites such as the place where the Sky Disk of Nebra was found tell of the cultural history of the country. Freyburg on the Unstrut is con- sidered the secret wine capital of the area. Every year on the second weekend in September, the largest wine festival of the
region is held here. Exploring this wine-growing region and its wines, vineyards, wine taverns and seasonal vintners wine bars is a lot of fun as there is a well-developed network of cycle paths, walking tracks and waterways. The
largest part of the region is located in the Saale-Unstrut-Triasland conservation
area.
More information about the German wine region of Saale-Unstrut at:
www.natuerlich-saale-unstrut.de

What the bocksbeutel is to the Franconians, the club-shaped bottle is to the Saxons. This peculiar bottle which resembles a bowling pin was inven- ted in 1931 in the former Weinbau-Versuchs- und
Lehranstalt Hoflößnitz (viticulture research and teaching institute) near Dresden. With its
museum, wine bar and vineyard Hoflößnitz is still a centre of Saxon wine culture
worth visiting.
More information about the German wine region of Sachsen at:
www.weinbauverband-sachsen.de

Sommeliers, wine connois- seurs, and people liv- ing in the growing areas
know that there is an appropriate glass for every type of wine. In Württemberg, this is a very strange receptacle: a glass mug. The only wine glass without
a stem has a convenient handle on its side and is mostly used in the traditional wine taverns. In gen-
eral, the inhabitants of Württemberg drink more wine than the people in all the other regions
in Germany.
More information about the German wine region of Wuerttemberg at:
www.wwg.de

One of the first wine- growers’ cooperatives in the world and the
first one in Germany was founded in Mayschoß in 1868. And this is why it happened: bad harvests and oppressive duties meant that many winemak- ing families could no longer subsist on their work
in the winery. Some emigrated, others joined to- gether to collectively operate a wine cellar. An
idea that works to this day – not only in the Ahr region!
More information about the German wine region of Ahr at:
www.wohlsein365.de

Among the excellent white wines from Baden is the “Klingelber- ger”. This is simply a
Riesling known by that name in the Ortenau. The name stems from the Klingelberg vineyard, part of the Schlossberg at Durbach where Margrave Carl Friedrich of Baden, master of the Staufenberg Castle
winery, had Riesling planted in 1782. The fact that this vineyard was first planted with only
a single variety, was an innovation at that time.
More information about the German wine region of Baden at:
www.sonnenmaennchen.de

One of the most famous Franken vineyards and the oldest documented vineyard site by name in
Germany is the “Würzburg Stein”. Steinwein has long been a synonym for Franken wine. A 1540s Steinwein is today still stored in the cellar of the Bürgerspital winery in Würzburg. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the German
national poet, was a pronounced connoisseur of Steinwein. On 17 June 1806 he wrote to his wife
Christiane: “Please send me some Würzburg wine, no other wine tastes as nice, and I
am in a surly mood if I lack my usual favourite drink.”
More information about the German wine region of Franken at:
www.haus-des-frankenweins.de

The Oden- wald forest has an “island”, namely the Odenwald wine island. This is of course not a real island,
but a small wine-growing region slightly separated from the rest of the Hessische Bergstraße around the
town of Groß-Umstadt to the west of Darmstadt. Wine is cultivated here on a mere 62 hectares not far from the Hessian metropolis Frankfurt am Main which also has a vineyard, the Lohberg. However, this is firstly part of the Rheingau region, and secondly the Frank-
furt people explicitly prefer a different kind of wine – that made from apples – called
“Ebbelwoi”.
More information about the German wine region of Hessische Bergstrasse at:
www.bergstraesser-wein.de

The town of Bacharach has several distinctive steep slopes. According to
an old saying the best wines are grown in Bacharach, and Pope Pius II had a barrel of Bacharach wine delivered to Rome every year. But there is also a very flat vineyard. It is situa- ted on a 680 by 150 metre island in the Rhine and is called
“Heyles’en Werth” after its former owner Hans Heyles. Today the island is cultivated by a winemaking family from
Bacharach. They do not only need strong legs like the steep slope vintners but also muscular arms as the
island can only by reached by rowing boat.
More information about the German wine region of Mittelrhein at:
www.mittelrhein-wein.de

The most ex- pensive sale of a vineyard to date took place in 1900 when the mayor of Bernkastel sold
4,300 square metres of the vineyard named “Doc- tor” to a certain Carl Wegeler – for 100 gold marks per vine. In today’s money that would be about 600 to 700 Euro per vine. The investment was worthwhile, however,
as the vineyard is now one of the most famous in the world and best in the region. Its peculiar name derives
from the fact that in 1630 the Archbishop Bohe- mund of Trier was ill but surprisingly recovered
after a few sips of wine and thus awarded the title of Doctor to the vineyard.
More information about the German wine region of Mosel at:
www.msr-wein.de

The Nahe also has a
wine route – like almost every region. But the Nahe vintners are working to-
gether with the German Gemstone Route, after all, the German gemstone stronghold Idar-Oberstein is not far away. Every year a special wine edition in a special
decorative bottle is put on the market. It is called “Edelschliff” (noble cut). Every bottle is furnished
with a precious stone – in 2010, it was an epi- dote, and inside the bottle is a liquid gem:
a selected wine from the Nahe!
More information about the German wine region of Nahe at:
www.weinland-nahe.de

The Deutsche Weinstraße goes through many typical wine villages with timber-
framed houses where vines are growing across the road. Once a year, on the last Sunday in August, on an event-filled day the entire German Wine Road is re- served for pedestrians and cyclists: an 80 kilometre long wine festival with more than 300,000 cyclists,
walkers and skaters!
More information about the German wine region of Pfalz at:
www.pfalzwein.de

The town of Hoch- heim am Main is also
located in the Rheingau region. This wine town with its famous wines is the origin
of the term “Hock” for Rhine wine which is still used in Eng- land today. The term probably became popular after Queen Victoria visited Hochheim in 1845. Due to the good taste of the Hochheim wines and the benefits to health attributed to them the phrase “a good Hock keeps off the doc!” had
established itself rather quickly. Even a century ago wines from the Rheingau were among the most ex-
pensive on wine lists throughout the world, and especially in England.
More information about the German wine region of Rheingau at:
www.rheingauer-wbv.de

Mainz, the state capital of Rheinland- Pfalz, is also the capital of Rheinhes- sen. Since 2008, it has
been a proud member of an illustrious circle – the Great Wine Capitals Global Network. It is composed of nine towns from the major wine regions of the world.
Besides Mainz these are Bordeaux, Florence, San Francisco, Christchurch, Bilbao, Mendoza, Porto and
Cape Town. The organisation’s aim is to promote tourism and wine culture. The earth is a wine planet – and Germany and Rheinhessen are part of it.
More information about the German wine region of Rheinhessen at:
www.rheinhessenwein.de